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Valuable habitats can also be created between factory floors and parking lots for plants and animals. Not only do insects benefit, but employees too.
Industrial and commercial areas account for almost 20% of Germany’s settled area. This also includes green areas in commercial areas, which are mostly standard green areas with neatly trimmed lawns and hedges of thuja or cherry laurel. Most insects find neither food, breeding grounds nor winter shelter here. But you can also create a biotope in an industrial area if you know how.
More than just a meadow of flowers
Christof Wegner drives a power tiller through the thick soil between the street and the warehouse. Until recently, the lawns on the grounds of the Sonatech company in Ungerhausen in the Lower Allgäu were kept short, and gardeners and landscapers are now creating living spaces.
Dead wood is piled up on the Sonatech site.
He had already planted shrubs such as hazelnuts, wild perennials, fur and spur flowers. He had spread dead wood, built a pile of sand and dug out a moist hollow. All that was missing now was a wildflower meadow.
Wild bees and butterflies, lizards and hedgehogs
He would sow wildflower seeds on the tilled ground, then cover it with cuttings from species-rich meadows. Here the insects would soon find everything they needed to survive: food for themselves and their offspring, breeding holes and building materials, shelter for the winter, and water.
Garden and landscape farmer Christoph Wegener says the insects attract other animals, such as lizards or hedgehogs. “When the bushes are bigger, birds will colonize them again.”
Nature Observation During lunch break
Sonatech boss Wolfgang Friedl has long been committed to environmental protection. Above all, to a good climate footprint: The warehouse facades are covered with photovoltaic modules and all company vehicles are electric. Now it’s biodiversity’s turn.
“We haven’t really done that yet,” Friedl admits. In the future, employees will be able to watch these areas develop during their lunch breaks. There will also be seating at the edges of the biotopes, “and then we’ll see what’s crawling and running.”
It helps the insect “middle class”
Native shrubs and flowers and other landscape elements within the plant will not save this very rare species. They are particularly beneficial to insects and birds that are not yet threatened and whose numbers have declined rapidly in the past few decades. To put it bluntly: the “middle class” of insects and birds.
There is a newly seeded, flowering meadow with shrubs between the street and the parking lot.
Lydia Reimann, a biologist at the Günztal Foundation, says that corporate green spaces have a lot to offer: “These are exactly the areas we urgently need in terms of species conservation.” The Günztal Foundation wants to create a network of biotopes from the Alps to the Danube in southern Bavaria and supports companies that want to do something for biodiversity in their region.
Professional expertise required
At TronikDsign in Betzigau in the Oberallgäu region, employees can already observe lizards on the company terrace. Stefan Simon, one of the managing directors, is particularly pleased with the swallowtail butterfly, a large, eye-catching butterfly that he now sometimes sees on his premises.
Four years ago, gardener Christof Wegner and a colleague brought biodiversity to the site. There are even a lot of bees buzzing in the parking lot. However, this only works if such areas are created and maintained by professionals with ecological expertise. According to the biologist, these are tasks that not every gardener and landscaper is up to.
Villagers also benefit
Stefan Simon from TronikDsign believes that creating natural areas is more expensive than “greening with zero eight five”. After all, a large part of the humus layer has to be removed. But in his opinion, the maintenance of these areas is cheaper. The gardener comes only once in spring and autumn. The effort is certainly less than mowing the lawn, says Stefan Simon.
He has now given tours of their outdoor facilities to some of the entrepreneurs, many of whom have now created biotopes on their sites. But what has pleased him most is the response from the villagers of Betzigau. “Some of them come over to pick flowers or ask if they can take some.”
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